After spending about 16 hours on two different planes, we arrived in Shanghai at about 5:00 pm. A guide from CITS (China International Travel Service) greeted us at the Pudong International Airport, gave us our Expo tickets, and transferred us to the 4-star Holiday Inn Downtown Shanghai.
Conveniently located next to the Shanghai Railway Station, the two wings of the Holiday Inn Downtown Shanghai are separated by a nice pedestrian zone that includes several restaurants, and a very handy (but small) "supermarket" that sells food, booze, cigarettes, gifts, and even luggage. Calling this store a supermarket is a bit of a stretch, but it had a very nice selection, and the prices were reasonable.
We decided to try our hotel's Chinese restaurant named Yue Garden. Located on the 2nd floor, it also serves a buffet breakfast each morning that includes both Chinese and Western dishes. When we arrived at the restaurant, the hostess seemed to think we might have arrived at the wrong restaurant by mistake. Perhaps she thought we were looking for the Western restaurant located in our hotel's other wing when she said almost apologetically, "this is the Chinese restaurant." Well we didn't travel to China to eat Western food, so we told her we were definitely in the right place.
The food at Yue Garden was outstanding. We had minced pigeon with vegetables, scallops with a sweetened lemon sauce, and crab and corn soup. This was my first experience eating pigeon, but I'm afraid this dish will be hard to top. The scallops were as good as any scallop dish I've ever had. The crab and corn soup was also very good, despite the use of yu jiang, a fish puree commonly known in the West as imitation crab meat.
At dinner, we were seated next to the window overlooking the pedestrian zone separating the two wings of our hotel. That's when I first noticed the supermarket located on the ground floor of the Holiday Inn's Plaza Wing. After dinner, we decided to walk over and stock up on soda and beer. Along the way, we passed a newsstand, and I bought a copy of Expo Weekly magazine in English. Expo Weekly is a very good magazine, and it is almost impossible to find outside of China.
After buying soda and beer, I walked around the pedestrian zone for a while taking a few pictures before returning to our hotel. Upon returning to my room, I realized there was a serious problem with my computer.
Ever since my computer was new, the connection for the power cord was never very good. Now, the connection had finally broken, and I was unable to charge my battery. I only had about one hour of power left, so I started emailing everyone to tell them I might be without a computer for my entire trip. This was especially disappointing since I had planned to use my computer to store our pictures, as well as communicating with everyone through email. It was already late and I was very tired, so I shut down my computer hoping that it would magically fix itself while I slept.
Day 2: Computer malfunction and my first night at Expo